Techlicious: Best Free Alternatives To Popular Software

Best Free Alternatives To Popular Software

The best software for your Windows PC or Mac used to be only available for a premium. Today, however, you can find plenty of free alternatives for software that in the past would have set you back several hundred dollars. And the same holds true for your mobile devices, as well.

Here are our picks for the best ways to save.

Alternatives to Microsoft Office (and Dropbox or SugarSync)

Last year Techlicious covered several good alternatives to Microsoft Office, but in 2012 the space has gotten significantly more interesting. That’s because Google now offers Drive and Microsoft has amped up its Skydrive product. You may be thinking these products are more similar to backup and sync services, such as Dropbox or SugarSync, and you’d be right. But since they also let you create Office-like files, why not get the best of both worlds?

Microsoft’s SkyDrive, and Google Drive are similar in that you get several gigabytes of free online storage for signing up.

They also both let you create and edit various kinds of file types—documents, presentations, spreadsheets and more—right inside a Web browser. You can also share files with others who can either view them or even edit them.

But the best benefit, in my opinion, is that they can backup your files to the cloud and let you access them from other computers—if you were traveling and need to access your files using a hotel PC, or if your laptop dies and you need your files on the new machine, as examples. They also let you access and create new files from mobile devices.

Google Drive is available for Windows and Mac, Chrome OS, iPhone and Android devices. It will be available for the iPad soon, Google says.

Skydrive is available for Windows and Mac, Windows Phone, iPhone and iPad. You can use various apps to access Skydrive from an Android device.